The closing of Riverside Park for extended construction has left us in a bit of a state of confusion. It’s part of our routine. So last weekend my husband and I opened up the search for replacements until Riverside reopens sometime this fall. We went down to Festival Park at Camp Bowie. It’s got some nice trees, a neat little iron bridge over a small creek and places to walk.
Wherever I go, I like to know something about the history of the place. To me, knowing what happened in the past at a location adds to the ambience. It lends some color to everyday scenes, and helps draw images in my mind. The little creek that runs through the park is called South Willis Creek, a small branch of Pecan Bayou. The stream has a limestone bed, unusual in the area, and was once a place where people gathered rock for construction. The historic Adams-Shaw House, built in 1876, and located at 3102 Coggin Ave, was built using stone quarried from Willis Creek.
Judging from old land grant maps, it seems likely that the parcel of land that makes up Festival Park was once part of the Coggin Brothers ranch sometime during the 1860s and early 70s. The park may also have been near or along an old cattle trail. According to a paper entitled Ranchers, Farmers, Soldiers, and the CCC by John J. Leffler, the country directly south of Brownwood once hosted an old cattle trail. “For a number of years after 1876, longhorns from other parts of the state also passed through the region on their way to northern and western markets. The cattle trail entered the county at its southeastern corner and then proceeded up the east bank of Pecan Bayou, crossing the stream a couple of miles southeast of Brownwood and passing near or through the northern sections of present-day Camp Bowie,” Leffler wrote.
“Before the arrival of large numbers of farmers, most of the county was a huge prairie; pecan and mesquite trees grew along the creeks and ridge tops, but most of the area, including what is now Camp Bowie, was covered with stirrup-high bluestem and gamma grass,” Leffler stated. “Despite the Comanche threat and general lawlessness during the 1860s and early 1870s, a number of cattlemen–the Coggin Brothers, W.L. Parks and J.J. Driskill–moved into the area and grazed their herds on the open range. The Coggins, who ranked among the most prominent cattlemen in central Texas, ran their stock across the prairie south of Brownwood (and quite possibly on land that is now Camp Bowie).”
There is a book called, Confessions of the Willis Creek Gang, by John Clardy, about growing up along Willis Creek in Brownwood before WWll. I looked on Amazon, but it’s a bit pricey for me, but it sounds like an interesting read. I think there is nothing better in childhood than playing along a creek. So many good memories of my own are from days spent catching crawdads, building dams and splashing around down by the creek.
In the paper by Leffler, he quotes a writer from the 1920s that saluted the passing of the old ways in Brown County and the arrival of the new. “The cackle of the hen and the grunt of the hog replace the whoop of the cowboys…. The day of the small ranch and the diversified farm instead of the wide range has finally arrived in Brown County,” the writer concluded.
Now the days of backyard chickens and pigs, small farms and often kids playing by the creek are largely replaced by the sounds of cars on the nearby highway, the chirrup of cell phones and the distant wail of sirens. My husband and I wandered across the old bridge, stood there for a while and listened to the water gurgle over the rocks. Times change, things move along, but the creeks and rivers never note it. They go about their business just as they always have, and the feel of life beside a creek, the ability water has to draw us back to ourselves and the natural world won’t ever change. It’s not as lush and storied as Riverside Park and Pecan Bayou, but Festival Park still has a tiny taste, some old land feel left about it, that is its own little charm.
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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns appear Thursdays on BrownwoodNews.com
